Odd, isn't it?

With all the religious rhetoric in our political dialogue we seem to have lost ideas like compassion and empathy. I have often wondered if a key thing for children to learn (if there is one) would be to learn to imagine what it might be like to live in another's shoes. If you can have compassion for someone who is different than you--hard to rob them, kill them, execute them, bomb their country.

I found this at Bruce's blog.

"Let's consider our political moment through a story. Suppose a chauffeur drives a sleek limousine through the streets of New York, a millionaire in the back seat. Through the window, the millionaire spots a homeless woman and her two children huddling in the cold, sharing a loaf of bread. He orders the chauffeur to stop the car. The chauffeur opens the passenger door for the millionaire, who walks over to the mother and snatches the loaf. He slips back into the car and they drive on, leaving behind an even poorer family and a baffled crowd of sidewalk witnesses. For his part, the chauffeur feels real qualms about what his master has done, because unlike his employer, he has recently known hard times himself. But he drives on nonetheless. Let's call this the Chauffeur's Dilemma."

Read the entire thing. It is worth it.